Monday, 18 December 2017

FATHER Frank King was rebuked by the Bishop of Motherwell Joseph Toal over a series of messages he sent on Facebook to Tony Moore.

BY Stuart McDonald

A PARISH priest has been removed from his post after a complaint was made to church bosses that he harassed a former altar boy online.

Father Frank King was rebuked by the Bishop of Motherwell Joseph Toal over a series of messages he sent on Facebook to Tony Moore.

The 29-year-old yesterday told how he was stunned when King, 50, started bombarding him with messages asking to meet up.

The priest contacted him online and repeatedly asked him to go out for dinner or meet up at his house.

When Tony, a hairdresser, didn’t reply to the messages, the priest at St Aidan’s church in Wishaw, Lanarkshire, tried to call him several times.

Tony had a meeting with Bishop Toal, where he showed him the messages and raised concerns about King’s behaviour.

Shocked: Tony Moore(Image: Pressteam)

Church bosses yesterday said King had been warned about his use of social media and has been relieved of his duties.

Parishioners were informed he would not be conducting services when they attended Mass at the weekend.

Tony, of Wishaw, told how he met King briefly in a restaurant in May last year when he was dining with a mutual friend. The priest later added him as a friend on Facebook.

He said: “When he first added me on Facebook, I wasn’t really sure who he was. He sent me a couple of messages just asking how I was, which I replied to just to be polite.

“But then I got a message from him asking me to come to his house to have a drink. I thought it was a bit strange and I didn’t reply.

“I then couldn’t believe it when I looked through his Facebook photos and saw he was a priest.”

Tony added: “I hadn’t heard anything from him for more than a year but then last month he started messaging me again.

“He was saying things like, ‘We need to get together’, ‘Why don’t you come to mine’ and ‘Don’t be shy’.

“They were inappropriate and provocative. It continued for three days. I was getting messages at all times of the day and night.

“I found it really creepy and I couldn’t believe I was being pestered like this by a priest.

“I had given absolutely no indication that I was interested in meeting up with him. It made me feel really uncomfortable and I went to my mum and told her what had been happening.”

Tony, his mother and sister met Bishop Toal last week.

He said: “The bishop looked through the messages but he never wrote anything down about what they said and then he asked me if I was surprised by it.

“He said he would speak to Father King and get back to me. He phoned me later and said he had spoken to Father King, who he said was very upset about it.

“He said Father King had said he thought he remembered me from when I was an altar boy and that’s why he had added me on Facebook. I have no memory of him.

“The bishop then said he had told him the messages were inappropriate and that it would not be happening again.

“I don’t know if he has done anything wrong legally but it is certainly morally wrong.”

A Diocese of Motherwell spokesman said: “This matter was not referred to the police. The priest concerned was asked to exercise care when using social media.”

Meanwhile, it emerged at the weekend that a priest from Perth has been suspended over historic abuse allegations.

The Catholic Church called in police after the allegations emerged against Father Tom Shields, the priest at St John the Baptist church in Perth.

He has been ordered to stand down from his duties while the claims are investigated.

PAT SAYS:Sadly another shocking scandal for the Catholic faithful of Scotland.Since the Cardinal O'Brien scandal, there has been one scandal after another to rock the faith of the Scottish Catholics.There are all kinds of scandals and problems worldwide in the Catholic Church - but the prevailing one seems to be the gay scandal of seminaries, dioceses and religious orders.It seems that many of these scandals are born in the seminarians with seminarians and priests abandoning their professions and promises.We saw it in Ireland with Maynooth and indeed with The Irish College in Rome.It seems that they had similiar problems in Scottish seminaries and in The Scots College in Rome.These are not isolated incidents.They suggest a very clear pattern - a pattern that the Pope and the world's bishops are going to have to address.

62 comments:

It never ends Pat... The Catholic Church is in denial about a problem that is glaringly obvious: the priesthood has turned into a dumping ground for homosexuals who want to escape from the harsh realities of life, who are coddled and supported by the hierarchy and much of the laity, while leading double lives and destroying the Faith of many little ones and diminishing the integrity and seriousness of the priesthood in the eyes of the younger generation.

The Church appears to have no awareness of how it is viewed now by those in their late teens and twenties.

8.31. Your comments are not true in their entirety. There are some wonderful youth programmes taking place for young people right across our country. Parishes try their best to engage young teenagers in different ways - not always successfully. However, we must remember the times we are living in. It's a very different landscape than 10/15/20 years ago. Handing on faith is hugely challenging and simplistic, uninformed comments like yours do not enlighten in any way. It is also a distortion to conclude that the church is a dumping ground for homosexual men to escape from harsh realuties of lufe. Give us your scientific research data - truthfully - instead of gossipy innuendo. What, may I ask is the Oratory offering teenagers to attract their commitment? What wonderful full congregations are there after 34 years or more? I don't see flames of fire anywhere - even in Larne!

Re/young people's views on the Church. My two teenage children attend Mass weekly with us and we know our older boy at away at university still does too as we see him on the chapel webcam. We pray God that they will continue on the right path. They seem to know and understand their faith well but we are so busy and probably can't take much credit for that. We give a lot of credit to the teachers in their Catholic schools along the way. They are great.

I've had the privilege to walk with teenagers in the journey of faith for more than fifteen years now. So many of them feel homeless. They have this personal encounter with Jesus and struggle to see the Christian community they meet in Acts at a local level. There are some very pastoral compassionate priest and lay ministers about but its far too inconsistent. The worst injury to a young person's faith is when a good priest is replaced by a twit. In my humble experience many of our young people have a healthier relationship with the Lord than some of the priests in ministry. I pray as a brother that some form of evangelisation takes place with those in ministry! Any form of pastoring when your prayer life has disappeared and your well is dry will inevitably end up in damaging those around. Bishop Pat, i love to see your focus on prayer life when you discern a brother's vocation. I think we have far too many theologians who have learned what spirituality is and never experienced it!

I've had the privilege to walk with teenagers in the journey of faith for more than fifteen years now. So many of them feel homeless. They have this personal encounter with Jesus and struggle to see the Christian community they meet in Acts at a local level. There are some very pastoral compassionate priest and lay ministers about but its far too inconsistent. The worst injury to a young person's faith is when a good priest is replaced by a twit. In my humble experience many of our young people have a healthier relationship with the Lord than some of the priests in ministry. I pray as a brother that some form of evangelisation takes place with those in ministry! Any form of pastoring when your prayer life has disappeared and your well is dry will inevitably end up in damaging those around. Bishop Pat, i love to see your focus on prayer life when you discern a brother's vocation. I think we have far too many theologians who have learned what spirituality is and never experienced it!

It looks as though that priest was stalking Tony Moore, the unhappy result of a obsession with the man.

It isn't enough, I'm afraid, that Father King has been relieved of active ministry: he needs counselling, not only about his apparent obsession, but about just how deeply he is prepared to re-commit himself to his freely made promise of celibacy. If it is established that this promise was not made in earnest (and cannot be re-committed to in the same way), then he really ought to be laicised as soon as possible.

I agree with you, 11:54, that laicisation would be extreme in this case...as a first step. But if this priest is not prepared to be celebate (and this includes chastity), then, realistically, what's the alternative?

Is it too much to expect that our priests have some integrity, to say nothing of a titter of basic wit??

Frank King is a buffoon. He is extremely immature and he should not be a priest.

I would not trust this man around my sons.

How can any young man go to a priest like this with a problem and not fear that he will be “perved” over as the young ones say?

How can they stand up with any credibility and preach a sermon?

The earlier poster at 08:31 is absolutely right about the danger these men are causing to the Church in Scotland. They are making Catholics a laughing stock in a country where there is a long history of bigotry against us.

12:29, what you've said (that King is back in ministry) is shocking, but not surprising. It's testament to the grossly over-inflated opinion clergy have of priesthood (and, therefore, of themselves): that, ontologically, a priest must be held in the highest regard...no matter how he behaves.

British history is thick with examples of this kind of thinking, to the point where offending clerics were considered too special to be tried in secular courts and were instead tried by Church-run tribunals, which, of course, handed down much more lenient sentences (ordered on pilgrimmage, for example, rather than suffer the more severe secular penalty).

By the looks of pleated surplice and rose vestments, there's a conservative tone in the picture. I thought you were radical! But you both look good. Pat, while I disagree with most of how you interpret things, realities and events, and while I believe you encourage much venom against the Catholic Church and clergy and allow Magna a vicious reign on this blog, I would genuinely love to see the emergence of small Christian communities of prayer, deep gospel spirituality, contemplation and social action. I think your vision would be much more successful and fruitful if you concentrated more on establishing such communities. Leave the criticism of the "sins of the fathers" to other critics. There's a trolley load of them available. I'd love to witness the growth of new Christian communities.

It's not unknown for a middle-aged man to become helplessly infatuated with a pretty young(er) thing. Death in Venice, for example. Painful, but normally it might be thought rather mean to involve the man's "boss" in resolving the situation.

I think it’s great that you have ordained Brother Jim to the order of Lector; it’s even more impressive that you have done so after consultation with your congregation at the Oratory.

I have read a lot about the Royal Commission in Australia over the last few days and have realised even more acutely how badly wrong the Church has got its priorities in relation to child protection and safeguarding even now. I love Catholic spirituality and going to Mass; I do not feel comfortable being part of the Roman Catholic Church which can do so much harm and still dare to suggest it has any moral integrity.

I pity the priest described here. I suspect the loneliness he felt and the desperation to be near another human being drove him to act in an entirely inappropriate way. I do not excuse him or his behaviour but wonder what kind of organisation, premised on love, would allow any human being to be put into such a situation. Clergy in open partnerships - gay or straight - seems to me a much more full and healthy way to encourage a ministry which is mature and developed. Perpetuating a system in which lonely men seek solace in food, drink, gambling and illicit sex seems crazy to me, however beautiful the theology of priesthood might be in the abstract. Can it ever justify such horrendous damage and human cost?

99.99% of the lonely men on the likes of Grindr, Fabguys etc are laymen. The AA and Weightwatchers are 99.9% lay people, so it's wrong to suggest that they are problems afflicting only Catholic clergy or caused by the Catholic church.

Is it just me or this blog or both that think that a significant no of RC Clergy have a screwed up sexuality. Clarice and I attended a Christmas Bash with the bishop this evening. Ordinands being ordained deacon attended including some partners attended. It all seemed extremely normal if there is such a thing. I not saying CoE is perfectI am wondering if generations of celibacy is a root contributor to many clerical hangups.

“There are closeted gay priests who are vipers,” observes the theologian Mark D. Jordan, the author of The Silence of Sodom: Homosexuality in Modern Catholicism. “They are really poisonous people, and they work out their own inner demonology by getting into positions in power and exercising it” against other gay men, women, and anyone whom they perceive to be a threat. “Alongside that are suffering priests who seem sincere all the way down, who are trying to be faithful to God, and also to take care of people and change the institution. They are the ones who are always forgotten, and read out of the story from both sides.”